Housekeeping is a great lucrative skill to have in your back pocket if you ever need to fill a day and earn a little extra cash! Plus, you want to be efficient at cleaning your own home, too! I have been housekeeping on the side for about a year and a half. It is a good supplementary income to pay for car fuel or grocery bills. It’s also good to expand your abilities with a decent pay, especially if you are new to your primary long-term job and are waiting for those wages to increase through pay raises.
I enjoy seeing messy spaces become clean and tidy again! It’s also a great opportunity for introspection and listening to podcasts or sermons. Here are my pro tips to be successful at cleaning houses for your clients.
- Always be honest and upfront. Be willing to replace and repair items if they are damaged (house cleaning business owners have insurance for this). Always communicate as best as you can with the client to build trust. Give them professional references to call before you start working for them so the client has little suspicion of your character and skills.
- Stay out of the person’s way if they are home; be quiet and gentle with household items. Ask if the client prefers you to start in a certain area of the house first. Be considerate if using a loud vacuum. Don’t be nosey about their personal life- keep talk light and professional.
- Always do your best and try to improve. Clean something the client wouldn’t normally expect you to clean. Get new cleaning products every now and then to have fun with and try out!
- Things to do FIRST: get the laundry going! This takes the longest. If you play it right, all of the laundry will be done when you are!
- Things to do LAST: cleaning the kitchen sink, sweeping, mopping, taking out the trash.
- Clean from top to bottom
- Carry all supplies with you in a caddy from room to room so that you don’t have to do so much running back-and-forth.
- Avoid using cleaning chemicals that come in a spray bottle because you are more likely to breathe in the mist.
- Rotate large household jobs: e.g. clean fridge one week, then the baseboards the next week.
- A well-lit room is vital to see clearly when dusting and wiping down surfaces, but turn off lights as you exit the room. Get at eye level with surfaces (in kitchen especially) to make sure you get every speck and crumb. Trust me, you think you’ve got everything wiped down, but just wait until you get at eye-level! You’ll be surprised.
- Clean mirrors and glass with alcohol-based cleaner (see my all-purpose cleaner below). It dries quickly with no smudge!
- Make sure baseboards are DRY after wiping them down before you vacuum. Otherwise dust could cling to them again.
- When cleaning the fridge’s condiments, make sure to wipe down the bottom of the bottles, too, to get off all that stickiness. Don’t take everything out of the fridge at once. Do one shelf at a time.
- Vacuuming hard surfaces works better than sweeping, generally.
- Dust with microfiber cloths that have been lightly dampened with an all-purpose no-smear cleaner. Feather dusters only get you so far because they only redistribute dust particles instead of getting rid of them. Feather dusters are good to fine-tune your work if there are STILL particles even after dusting with a damp microfiber cloth. Make sure the client is keeping up with air filter changes to lessen the dust in the house.
- Clean the plastic shower liner by taking it down and wiping it down on a clean floor.
- Use the client’s vacuum. Don’t take one vacuum with you from house to house, because some people could be allergic to pet dander, etc. Unhygienic. Keep up with vacuum bag changes.
- Occasionally ask the client if there is anything else they would like done or if there are any improvements to be made on the job you did.
Favorite cleaning supplies
- Soft Scrub bleach for cleaning sinks, tubs, showers, and mildew.
- Small grout scrubber to get the nooks and crannies of sinks and tubs.
- All-purpose cleaner made of alcohol, water, a few drops of dish soap, and essential oil.
- Microfiber cloths
- Two spray bottles and caddy
- Simple Green for getting most stains and spots out of carpet.
- Scented carpet dust if they have pets
- Ostrich feather duster
- Toilet bowl cleaner
- Plastic bristle brush for cleaning the bottom of tubs and showers.
- Goo-gone just in case!
- Lime-A-Way is the only product that I have found that removes hard water stains on showers and sinks. I was SO happy when I tried it for the first time with instant results!
- Swiffer mop jet (LOVE!)
- Lysol mopping detergent if no Swiffer mop jet
- Borax for cleaning kitchen and bathroom grout
I hope you find these tips helpful if you are considering starting up your own side-hustle or even if you just want to improve the skills and knowledge you have to clean your own home!
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